The present invention relates to potted plants and in particular to devices for caring automatically for potted plants.
As is well known, it is highly desirable to provide devices capable of automatically caring for potted plants so that in this way manual operations in connection with the care of the potted plants need not be carried out. Thus it becomes possible for potted plants to remain unattended for extended periods of time, while people are away on vacation, for example, so that during such times the potted plants will be automatically cared for. Conventional devices of this type, however, are concerned only with automatically continuing the feeding of a suitable liquid to a potted plant. It is known, for example, to provide communication between a potted plant and a source of liquid through wicks which by capillary action automatically feed liquid to the potted plant. Also, there are known relatively complex moisture-detecting devices which respond when detecting a certain lower limit of moisture to bring about automatic feeding of liquid to a potted plant.
However, such known devices do not solve the problem. The feeding of liquid is, for example, highly localized so that suitable distribution of liquid through the potted plant is not assured. Also, even if liquid is supplied, the soil of the potted plant can become undesirably dry and crusted particularly at the exposed surface of the soil, so as to prevent proper aeration of the potted plant. In addition, potted plants which are cared for by known automatic devices conventionally remain stationary so that the plants tend to grow with an undesirable bias toward the sunlight.